quick reminder that you’re actually not obliged to feel any empathy for someone who would have described your death as ‘necessary’ if the exact same thing had happened to you
Wikipedia is lost to our friends across the waters.
This means that Wikipedia has been banned in the UK, because Wikipedia refuses to require age verification from users in order to access the site. Other countries, including the US, are trying to put similar regulations in place. Basically, requiring people to identify themselves to access any content on the internet that their government considers “inappropriate for children”. This was supposed to be for pornography, but now, it’s so much more…
Governments are essentially moving to make it so that they can track our internet activity. There will be no such thing as privacy and anonymity on the Internet anymore. The world governments will be watching you, not just your own, all of them, and any site that won’t comply with the governments putting these laws into effect, will be banned in those countries.
This is a matter of privacy, of data security (how many places online do you want to be keeping your ID on file? The more that do, the more likely your data is exposed in a data breach), of censorship and of the freedom of information. The UK just banned an online ENCYCLOPEDIA. Not North Korea! Not China! The United Kingdom!!! Because they said it contained information inappropriate for minors, and it had to collect its users personal private data in order to let them see it, and they said no!
S.1748 - Kids Online Safety Act has been introduced in the United States Congress, and Australia and the EU are also looking at similar regulations.
This is just the beginning. This fight is going to be world wide. This isn’t “protecting the children”. This is censorship, and conditioning us to surrender our right to privacy!
I feel like “trump wants to throw away literal dinosaur fossils” would really turn heads if we actually had a functional opposition party in this country to get messages out, but I guess I’ll just have to get a paint pen and write it on my car. fine, I’ll do it.
Trump and friends are trying to get rid of IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Science, USA Federal agency). Everyone is on leave/in admin limbo while the DOGE kids do whatever and lock people out of their emails. Already-awarded federal grants (that’s how I get paid) for museums and libraries are now being terminated early via executive order. Museums are already closing (to be fair it has been bad for decades) and a lot of large and delicate fossil material will need new homes with space and funding, which almost no one has. It’s bad. I don’t know what to do except to keep working and occasionally scream into the internet.
Not trying to be a bummer, but this is pretty much the only thing anyone at my job can think about right now. I can only speak for museums, but specimens need periodical tending or they will decay or get lost. Grant funding is how we do everything: it’s how temporary workers get paid, how we get access to subscription-based software, and it’s how we buy new label paper for cripes’ sake. We are still fighting, but everyone is honestly loopy with stress all the time now. People should know what they are destroying.
There’s never a polite time, place, or way to say “ohh my fucking god you people never stop complaining about anything do you”, but I think there should be.
